


Warm Like the Sun

by Ancalime1



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Femslash February, Fluff, Kairi has a Gummi Ship!, Probably the corniest thing I have ever written, Specifically lesbian space fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 13:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9608984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ancalime1/pseuds/Ancalime1
Summary: Olette shows her the city; Kairi shows her the stars.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **[Currently undergoing revisions]** A little piece I wrote for Femslash February because I'm gay and love space. There you have it, friends. Enjoy.

_Warm Like the Sun_

 

Dusk always caught the sleepy town in a soft glow before the onset of the dark. As the sun slowly disappeared beyond the horizon, the same routine would commence: curtains to windows would be drawn, patrons would begin to empty out of stores and into the streets, and the ornate lampposts that lined the walkways would twinkle to life in the evening air. It was a lovely event, leaving few to wonder how the town—Twilight Town, as it was called—got its name in the first place.

It was such a simple pleasure, and yet it was one of the few things that Olette cherished most. The way the sun bathed the streets in reds and golds never failed to cause a stir of warmth inside of her, like the dancing flicker of candles, or the cordial crackling of a fireplace. For her, it evoked a sense of familiarity, the feeling of home. It was something she longed to share with someone else, someone who would appreciate the feeling just as much as she did.

Thus, in the afternoon that Kairi had arrived, Olette had immediately taken it upon herself to try and befriend the newcomer. As a dutiful resident of Twilight Town, she had seen it as her personal responsibility to take the other girl under her wing, a gesture which the soft-spoken Kairi had few qualms with. Together they toured the bustling downtown district—the marketplace that hummed with customers, to the quiet residential division—essentially, the “need to knows” of the town itself. And then, in what Olette had perceived as a small act of companionship, she led her to the clock tower to view the sunset.

The tower was, in Olette’s opinion, the most ideal spot for sunset-viewing. It stretched about a hundred feet above the town’s train station, and was composed of smooth sandstone that reflected the fiery evening sky. Perched above the cluster of clock faces was a narrow platform from which one could sit and dangle their legs, all while listening to the rhythmic ticking from the giant timepiece below.

It was rather short for a building of its caliber, and yet Olette could see the telltale signs of panic fleet across Kairi’s face as they climbed the steps. More than once she asked the girl if she had wanted to go back down—there were, after all, plenty of other locations from which the sunset could be enjoyed. But for Kairi, determination seemed to outweigh the fear, and she trailed doggedly after Olette to the top of the tower.

Once they had reached the end of the stairs, Olette took Kairi’s hand and guided her to the platform that jutted out near the top. Carefully the girls picked their way along the ledge, their hands clasped tightly in cautious excitement.

They seated themselves side by side, waiting patiently for the sun to sink from the sky. More than once Olette would notice that Kairi had begun to tremble, her eyes glued to the dizzying panorama and the massive drop below. Olette would once more ask her if she had wanted to leave, to which Kairi would respond with a shaken but stubborn “No.” Olette would then squeeze her hand in reassurance, which never failed to prompt a small smile from Kairi.

Sundown came at last, and the town became enveloped yet again in a familiar blaze of color. Familiar, to Olette, that is; Kairi, who was more accustomed to the seaside vistas of her old home, had never seen the like before. Far below them, the red and beige brick buildings began to melt into a blurred bouquet of orange and scarlet. Slowly the sky blushed deeper and darker, until wisps of blues and blacks began to paint the horizon into a soft twilight. The gentle gloom settled across the town like a blanket, broken only by the cheerful flickering of streetlamps and starlight.

The two sat and regarded the evening together in comfortable silence, and so they would for the weeks to come. Within the span of a half-month they had come to be quite close, and had gradually learned more about each other as the days trickled by. They chatted at length about trivial things like school and work: Olette had explained to Kairi that she was a senior-year student who was expecting to graduate in a few months, and that her favorite pastimes revolved around playing sports and chatting over coffee. But from Kairi she gathered very little, other than the fact that she too was a senior-year student, and that she had lived as an islander before she had come to Twilight Town. When prompted about the details of island-life, however, she simply smiled and said that there wasn’t much to tell. In the end, Olette judged her to be a difficult girl to crack—undoubtedly friendly, yes, but just as equally reserved.

The following week, however, caught Olette by surprise. She met Kairi at the base of the clock tower, as per usual, only to discover that her companion had something else in mind.

Kairi, who usually did not care much for appearances, had arrived looking decidedly more kempt than usual. Her unruly red hair had somehow achieved a much tamer state, and the telltale dashes of color on her cheeks indicated that she had recently invested in some makeup. Grinning and eyes bright with excitement, she joined her friend beneath the clock tower.

“Whoa. Got a hot date tonight?” joked Olette as she approached.

Kairi reddened slightly. “Oh, please,” she said, giving her friend a gentle shove. “Hey, mind if we skip the sunset tonight? There’s something I wanna do.”

“Sure, what’d you have in mind?”

Olette should have known better by now then to expect a plain answer from Kairi, who seemed to possess a knack for evading explanation. Nevertheless, she raised an eyebrow when her friend declared that “it was a surprise,” and promptly dashed off before Olette could say anything more.

She smiled a bit to herself before following suit.

 

They picked their way through the streets of Twilight Town, shoving their way through the teeming marketplace and to the outskirts of the town. A series of moors occupied the space between the cluster of houses and the woods beyond—a sea of grass that had turned brittle and golden-brown in the summer drought. But if Olette looked closely enough, she could see tiny bunches of heather pushing their way through the surface, paying no mind to the hardened landscape that surrounded them.

Night had already begun to fall as the girls began to make their way across the moorland, the spokes of grass scratching uncomfortably at their ankles. More than once Olette would issue a complaint to her companion regarding the matter, and more than once Kairi would reassure her that they had not yet reached their destination. This prompted an impatient huff from Olette, though curiosity of her friend’s “surprise” drove her forward nevertheless.

Without warning, Kairi halted in her tracks—which in turn nearly caused Olette to collide into her. They stood before a dip in the field, a wide and shallow bowl of grass crowned with heather. A silver mass occupied the center of the bowl, a mass that Olette was unable to identify from afar. And when her companion said nothing, she ventured, “So, uh, what exactly are we looking at here?”

Kairi drew a hand behind her head in embarrassment. “Okay. You’re gonna laugh,” she began uneasily. “But that thing down there is, um… well, it’s a ship. It’s how I got here in the first place.”

Olette gave her companion a bemused look. “A ship? As in, like…”

Kairi gave her a timid smile. “Yup.”

Olette’s eyes immediately became round with wonder. “You never told me you were from off-world!”

Kairi shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t think you would believe me,” she admitted. “Not a ton of people know about the other worlds, you know.”

“I suppose that’s true.” She shoved her hands in her pockets and grinned. “So, you gonna show me around, or are we gonna stare at it all night?”

As if in answer, Kairi smiled and, taking her friend’s hand, led Olette down the slope to where the ship was settled.

Olette found a smirk form across her face as she approached. The exterior of the vessel was laughably simple—it was cylindrical in structure, and seemed to resemble a giant misshapen thimble more than anything. A pair of engines flanked either side of the ship, and protruding from the head of the vessel was a thick bubble of glass that encased a cramped-looking cockpit. A barrage of skepticism hit her just then—while she knew very little about the subject of interworld travel, the ship itself appeared to be about as functional as a car without wheels.

“It looks ridiculous, I know,” said Kairi, as if she had read Olette’s mind. “But trust me, it really does work.”

Olette grinned. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to see it to believe it.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“It’s whatever you want it to be.”

Kairi’s mouth twitched in amusement. Opening the hatch to the ship, she took Olette’s hand once more and ushered her through the narrow passage that led to the mid-deck.

Behind them, the hatch closed with a pressurized hiss. Several lights began to flicker on, illuminating the mid-deck and allowing Olette to fully inspect her surroundings. They were enclosed in a spacious room that was padded in white and located directly beneath the entry hatch. It was completely empty, save for a narrow passage that led to the flight deck and another hatch that sealed off the opposite end.

"What's in there?" asked Olette, pointing at the closed passage.

Kairi gave her a timid smile. "My cabin," she said. "Here, I'll show you."

She dialed something into the little box outside the hatch, which responded with yet another hiss as it yawned open. Their hands still linked, Olette gingerly treaded after her friend and into the cabin. It reminded her somewhat of the interior of a travel trailer: compact, yet cozy. Panels of windows lined the sides of the ship, each sporting a set of cheery striped curtains. A nightstand and wood-frame bed served as the only discernable furniture pieces, both of which were pressed snugly against the corners of the room in the interest of conserving space.

“So this is home sweet home, huh?” she said at last, turning to face Kairi. “Please tell me it has a bathroom.”

“Yes, thankfully,” laughed Kairi. “And there’s even a shower—though in all honesty it acts more like a hose, if anything.”

Olette raised an eyebrow. “Oh, what a hard life it must be,” she teased. “Hell, I’d take a crappy shower any day if it meant I got to see other worlds.”

A warm smile lit up Kairi’s face. “Yeah. Me too.”

A long and prickling pause followed. Kairi was regarding her fondly, which in turn had caused Olette to blush and look away rather quickly. “Well, obviously,” she said, in an effort to save face. “I mean, you have already.”

“Hmm. True enough.”

Olette’s cheeks burned. Somewhat impatiently, she remarked, “So are we actually gonna go somewhere, or what?”

Kairi chuckled. “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Okay. Let’s get this thing off the ground already.” She gestured for Olette to follow her, and disappeared at once down the corridor to the head of the ship.

The remainder of the ship looked more as Olette had expected it would—clunky and cramped and overwhelmingly mechanical. The passage leading to the cockpit was tubular in structure, and gave Olette the impression of walking through a gigantic pipe. Several wires snaked their way along the corridor like discolored jungle vines, and a series of dials and switches dotted the surrounding walls like odd decorations. Olette half-wondered how Kairi had been able to operate such a mechanism by herself, and if indeed she knew what the purpose of each control was. Shrugging to herself, she pushed the thought away and plodded along after her friend.

The end of the passageway scooped downward into the cockpit, which was a tiny compartment encased beneath a dome of glass. A dashboard lined the anterior end, and was occupied by a number of dials and monitors. Occupying the space before it was a wide cushioned bench, which Kairi heaved herself onto and beckoned Olette to do the same.

“C’mon,” she said when Olette didn’t move.

“Uh, right,”  fumbled Olette, her eyes glued to the dash and the window above. “I… you know, maybe I should wait in the cabin.”

A line of concern appeared between Kairi’s eyebrows. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I just… this is a lot to take in. More than I thought it would be.”

Kairi gave her a sympathetic look. “I understand. Maybe we can go some other day—when you’re ready.”

Olette considered this for a moment, but then shook her head. “Screw ‘ready,’” she said, a nervous grin finding its way across her face. She made her way to the bench and seated herself next to Kairi. “C’mon. Let’s blow this joint.”

Kairi smiled and gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

Olette said nothing, but swallowed and gave her a brisk nod.

Several monitors flickered to life as Kairi began to fiddle with the controls on the dash. A feeling of giddiness churned inside of Olette’s gut, and she found that she had to close her eyes to prevent herself from overtly panicking. Something warm brushed against her fingers, and she cracked an eye open to see Kairi’s hand cradling her own. Smiling a bit to herself, she allowed her body to relax and sink into the depths of the bench, her eyes closing once more.

The ascent was gentler than what Olette had expected, like the steady climb of a roller coaster car before the drop. Only there would be no drop this time—a thought that both relieved and terrified her all at once. Realizing that this was how Kairi must have felt during her first days on the tower, she steeled herself and gripped her friend’s hand. _She was brave for me,_ thought Olette defiantly. _Time for me to return the favor._

“Olette,” came Kairi’s voice, soft and breeze-like against her ear: “Open your eyes.”

It was a simple enough request—but in that particular moment, her eyelids felt as if they had been glued together. The giddy sensation had returned, and she was finding it increasingly harder to move. But another squeeze from Kairi’s hand brought her back to her senses, back to safety. She sucked in a breath and forced her eyes open.

It was strange, seeing the world fall beneath them. They were hovering above a palette of blues and greens, crowned with silver wisps of cloud. And as they continued to rise, Olette could see a golden sliver of light hugging the brim of the planet. Somewhere far below, the sun was setting—and so it would continue to do for as long as the world still turned.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, her voice catching in her throat. “I… I never would have imagined… ”

Kairi gave her a soft smile. “When I first came to Twilight Town, you showed me something very special. I was scared at first… but it was well worth it, in the end.”

Olette swallowed hard and said nothing, her eyes fixed on the expanse below. Somehow her heart had gotten clogged in her throat, preventing any words from surfacing.

“It’s funny,” continued Kairi. “Sometimes I just feel so weighed down when I’m on the ground, like there’s so much that I have to do. But being out here… it’s so liberating. It’s as if time has stopped, and I can just let go.”

“Like nothing matters anymore,” murmured Olette at last, her voice barely audible.

A thoughtful look crossed Kairi’s face. “I wouldn’t say that,” she said, twining her fingers around Olette’s. “In fact, I can say with certainty that there are two things that matter very much to me right now.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, the view, for one,” she replied, sweeping her arm in the direction of the window. “And the fact that I finally have someone to share it with.”

Her words melted into a long silence, one that was neither uncomfortable nor unwanted. She was regarding Olette with the same expression from before, full of warm affection and utter fondness. And with the earth and sun glowing behind her, she had suddenly become radiant, otherworldly, like a spray of stars in the sky.

As they sailed out into the black, she found herself drawing ever closer to Kairi, closing the gap that lay between them. As she did this, she searched Kairi’s face for signs of a reaction, a cue to either cease or continue. But there was nothing, nothing except for a pair of eyes staring patiently into her own.

They sat like this for several heartbeats, eyes interlocked in a dance of uncertain anticipation. Then, out of sheer impulse, Olette wrapped her arms around her and kissed her.

She could hear Kairi grunt in surprise—a gesture that Olette mistook for dissatisfaction. But when they pulled away from each other, she was relieved to see a delighted grin form across her friend’s face.

“Didn’t expect that, didja?”

Kairi was still grinning. “No. No, I didn’t.”

Olette allowed her friend to pull her even closer, until there was no space left between them. She felt a pair of lips brush against her neck, and she found herself sighing contentedly into Kairi’s hair.

“It’s funny,” she murmured. “Never would’ve thought that I’d be flying through outer space, making out with another girl. Pretty damn weird, huh?”

“I don’t think it’s weird.”

“Oh, of course _you_ don’t.”

Kairi laughed, her breath stirring the hair that lay upon Olette’s shoulder. An intense warmth glowed between them, like a thousand suns bursting within their chests. They held each other for several minutes, immersed in sweet and silent tranquility. Far below them the world was sinking, a glittering orb that slowly became engulfed in the gentle blanket of space. But the fear that had gripped Olette before had gone, drowned in Kairi’s loving arms. And as they drifted further and further into the night, Olette had decided in that moment that there was no place she'd rather be.

**Author's Note:**

> Updated it because I had decided to invest a little (emphasis on a little) time into research of spacecraft design. Nothin' fancy though -- this is a Gummi ship we're talking about, after all. 
> 
> Anyways, hope you enjoyed!


End file.
